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🠈  Samuels Jewelers  🠊

Samuels Jewelers

Samuels Jewelers was a leading chain of jewelry stores with headquarters in Austin, Texas and locations throughout the Western United States.

Answers.com traces the corporate history to 1956 when David Blum and Gerson Fox created a regional chain of jewelry stores in Los Angeles called Barry's Jewelers.

In 1977. Unimax bought Barry's Jewelers and with the help of the founders expanded the chain to 56 stores.

The company engaged in rapid expansion in the 1980s and acquired Mission Jewelers from Zales Corporation and Samuels Jewelers from Peoples Jewelers of Canada. Other acquisitions included the stores Gold Art Creations, Hatfield Jewelers, A. Hirsch & Son, Schubach Jewelers, and Ringmaker.

The rapid expansion was fueled in part by loose consumer credit. The combination of bad consumer loans and over extension forced the company through a series of bankruptcies in the early 1990s. As the company changed hands through different creditors, creditor's changed the company's name from Barry's Jewelers to Samuels Jeweler, which was the company's oldest brand.

The Samuels Jewelers brand was established by Albert Samuels in 1891. The flagship store is noted for the construction of the Samuel's Clock in 1915 near 5th and Market in San Francisco.

In 2006, Samnuels Jewelers was purchased by the Gitanjali Group of India. The Gitanjali Group began in 1966 as a small company that cut and polished gems in Surat, Gujarat, India. Run by entrepreneurs using modern marketing techniques, Gitanjali Group has grown to over 4000 shops in India.

With stable financing, Samuels Jewelers is now well established as one of the world's largest jewelers. Gitanjali trades on the Bombay Stock Exchange with the code: 532715

In February 2018, Indian authorities charged Gitanjali and chairman Mehul Choksi with defrauding Indian banks Samuels Jewelers filed for bankruptcy in February 2019 and closed its remaining 119 stores.

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References:

  1. Wikipedia - Gitanjali Group (Drawn 5/22/2019)
  2. JCK Online - Samuels Closes Stores (Drawn 5/22/2019)

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